And Now, Some (Pretty Bad) Ideas For The ‘Breaking Bad’ Movie

The tricky thing about this Breaking Bad movie — which is happening, everyone says so — is that Vince Gilligan and company appear to have boxed themselves in a bit, plotwise. That kind of thing will happen when you kill off just about all of your interesting characters in the last season and then make a prequel series that methodically lays out the origin stories of just about everyone but Walter White, who, again, at least where we left the Breaking Bad story, is very much dead.

And so, Pinkman! Reports — oh, there have been reports — indicate that the movie in question will follow “the escape of a kidnapped man and his quest for freedom.” That sure sounds like Jesse Pinkman, given that our last vision of him involved breaking free from his Nazi hellcage and screaming — literally and figuratively — off into the Albuquerque night. Some reports are even straight-up confirming that it’s a Pinkman special. That’s cool. I’ve given up second-guessing Vince Gilligan on these types of things after Better Call Saul went from “a questionable spin-off about a thin but fun character” to “maybe the best show on television and one that might end up giving the original a run for its money.”

But deferring to his judgment doesn’t mean I’m sacrificing my god-given right to toss out some very bad and very unsolicited ideas for this thing. No, it certainly does not. I am still super going to do that, right now, after this sentence and maybe two more. None of these will ever get made, nor should they. I regret absolutely none of it.

Jesse on the Lam

Okay, I lied. This one might get made. Kind of. Back in the wake of the Breaking Bad finale, when Gilligan was doing interviews galore with every outlet that could wrangle him, he said this about Jesse:

My personal feeling is that he got away. But the most likely thing, as negative as this sounds, is that they’re going to find this kid’s fingerprints all over this lab and they’re going to find him within a day or a week or a month. And he’s still going to be on the hook for the murder of two federal agents. But yeah, even though that’s the most likely outcome, the way I see it is that he got away and got to Alaska, changed his name, and had a new life. You want that for the kid. He deserves it.

I… I would watch that. I will watch that, if that’s what they end up making. I am very much here for Jesse Pinkman, like, chopping wood in Alaska under a fake name like Brett Saskatchewan or something. In fact, this brings me to another idea…

Meth Crisis

For reasons that are unclear and never adequately explained, the government needs high-quality meth, pronto. The crystal blue stuff that took over the southwest a few years ago, preferably. Maybe it’s a military thing, maybe it’s an undercover investigation, who cares. The point is, with Walter dead and Gus and his superlab gone, the options are running thin.

CUT TO

A helicopter swoops over an Alaskan forest and lands in a clearing. A man in a suit steps out. He carries himself like someone important, chest out but not swaggering, moving with purpose but totally calm. He approaches a bearded man who has paused his wood-chopping to address this stranger.

“Son,” the man says. “Your country needs you. Can you still cook up that fancy blue meth.”

The bearded man freezes, just for an instant. “Not sure I know what you’re talking about, friend. Name’s Brett Saskatchewan. I work over at the hardwa-“

“Drop the act, Pinkman. We know it’s you. We’ve had you on our radar for months.”

The bearded man freezes again, this time for a few instants. “But… why me? Don’t you have some government chemist who can cook this stuff up?”

“Why you?”

The bearded man gets frustrated. “Yeah, why me? I left that life behind.”